Peace, Love & (Game) Jam: Because Video Games Don't Need Violence

We live in a time where video games focus heavily on blasting invaders, blowing the crap out of everything, running people over, nuking entire nations and other acts of mass-violence. While I admit that such stuff can be fun, the need for portraying the opposite does exist. Say hello to the Peace, Love & Jam game jam.

Should you choose to participate in this jam, go ahead and put away those guns, spears, swords, pitchforks, grenades, rocket launchers, fighter jets and any other weaponized models you may have. You’re not gonna need them to create a non-violent game that, one way or another, incorporates peace, after all.

It can be an experience completely void of action (and thus, reaction), which instead revolves around calm exploration – might even be educational. Or how about some IF (Interactive Fiction)? Spin a ‘what if?’ tale, based on an extremely gruesome part of history, giving it a peaceful resolution with no body count instead? Those are just suggestions off the top of my head, and more can be found on the jam’s ‘examples‘ page in the form of non-violent – yet popular – games.

Each game will be assigned a paper crane badge of a unique colour or pattern upon submission. We’ll keep track of how many unique cranes we have on the front page during the jam. Cranes are a symbol of peace and we’ll try to string together as many cranes (games) as we can before the end of the jam.

As far as using existing assets goes, that’s perfectly fine. Just be sure to keep the deadline (August 20th) in mind, should you choose to partake in this harmonic game of peace creation (or something along those lines). Since Peace, Love & Jam is hosted in cooperation with Game Jolt, to submit your creation, simply upload it to Game Jolt with #peaceloveandjam in the game description. Time to remind everyone, that violence is not a mandatory component of an enjoyable video game!